Thursday, May 9, 2013

SHENANIGANS!! (On Pulstar spark plug advert graph)

Spending time in the waiting room at my doctors office, I started to peruse a Scientific American magazine and I came upon an advertisement for Pulstar spark plugs. They claimed that these particular spark plugs increase performance. And they even have a graph to back it up. But the graph has to be false. I'm so confident in my assessment I've decided to call Shenanigans to the community. The graph is shown below.

How can I be so sure this graph is wrong. Torque and horsepower always equal one another at approximately 5252 RPM. It has to do with the nature of horsepower (HP), torque (LBFT) and RPM. There is one equation to bring them all together:

HP=LBFT*RPM/5252

Setting RPM equal to 5252 cancels out the divisor in the equation, and we're left with HP=LBFT @5252 RPM.

Now look at the graph above. Torque and HP cross at something below 5000 RPM. Therefore, (and to sum up, and in conclusion) I call Shenanigans!